Saturday, March 23, 2013

What's a YOLO Flip | I-Pod's Gold Medal Trick Explained

By Andrew SachsThe biggest news out of X-Games Tignes is that Iouri Podlatchikov, aka I-Pod, nailed the first ever (what announcers called) Cab double cork 1440 in competition history in the snowboard superpipe finals. He who lands the trick gets to name it: I-Pod's calling it the YOLO Flip (even though you flip twice). This new trick follows on the heels of the breakthrough of the Triple Cork at X-Games Aspen.

To understand the trick, start with its traditional name:

Cab = switch frontside. I-pod said himself that the term "Cab", which comes from Steve Caballero of skateboarding legend, should be reserved for skateboarding tricks. He refers to the YOLO Flip as a switch frontside trick.

Double Cork = 2 inverts

1440 = 2 inverts + 2 rotations

To see how all that happens at once to create the YOLO Flip, check out the frame-by-frame breakdown, below. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to X-Games Tignes this year, so we have to rely on grainy zoomed-in video stills...

In frame 1, you can see I-Pod hitting the pipe in switch and starting to spin frontside, hence the Cab/switch frontside reference.

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2

I-Pod is completely vertical in frame 2, on his way to full inversion in frames 4-7 as part of his first cork...

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4

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Completing his first cork, I-Pod flips back upright through frames 8-11. Of course, he is still only about halfway through the 4 total rotations (spins + flips) that make this trick a 1440...

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Grabs anyone? I-Pod's on it...

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Would love to see that fan's picture in frame 10...

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11

Here we go again as I-Pod starts to invert himself as he heads into cork 2...

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And completely inverted for the second time, frames 14 and 15.

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Still spinning...

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Coming out of his second inversion...

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Dipping below the lip of the pipe and finishing the 1440 rotation...

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And I-Pod stomps out the landing in frame 21 to complete the trick for the first time ever in competition. So how come he ended up in 4th place? On his last trick he landed like this...

Although I-Pod would have liked to nail that last trick and end up with Tignes gold, he said after the event that he wouldn't trade landing the YOLO flip for gold...he called it "the best fourth place ever." I would have to agree with him. It also seems that landing the YOLO Flip was a message to Shaun White that he better be ready for the 2014 winter olympics in Sochi. It's on.